Fellow Feeling
by Rosethorn
Summary: A scared and angry teenage boy converses briefly with a scared and angry teenage girl. PreStorm Front, slight AU.


A/N: Alternate universe, obviously, but only slightly. Constructive criticism respectfully requested.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden was concentrating on his name when he ran into the girl.

At the time, he'd been spelling it backwards. There was nothing else he could do, really. Marking time, wasting the night, walking one last time around this city he'd been brought to. Chicago. Nice place. He wouldn't mind living there, maybe, when he grew up.

_If_ he grew up.

Back to his name. At least it wasn't changing.

E-i-f-r-o...no, wait, that should be another e. E-p-p-o-

"Ouch!"  
The girl had been huddling on a bench, and it was pretty clear she'd been crying. Harry guessed he'd stepped on her foot. The way she was glaring at him, he must've done something. "Sorry," he said, briefly.

"You don't even know what you're sorry _for,_" she snapped.

"Take your pick," he snapped back. "It was a fucking accident, okay?"

The girl glared harder. "Watch where you're going next time."

"There isn't going to _be_ a next..." Harry trailed off. There really wasn't. He was moving to the boondocks of Missouri or someplace, with some old fart wizard who'd probably lock him in a closet or something, and the White Council just waiting for him to make one mistake so they could kill him.

"Um? Are you okay?"

The girl's voice brought him out of it. "Yeah. Sorta." He looked down, and blinked. She was standing next to him now, and she barely came up to his collarbone. "Wow, you're short."

She scowled. "I _know._ It's not like I don't hear about it every day. You can't be a cop if you don't grow some, Karrin. Aikido champs aren't five feet tall, Karrin. Better find somebody to take care of you in case you stay that short, Karrin." Her voice took on a harsh, mocking edge.

"Ouch," Harry said, feeling mildly sorry for her. "Brothers?"

She sighed. "Two, and a baby sister, but I'm the oldest. They're all taller than me. Except Lisa, but she's only six."

"I'm an only child. An orphan, too."

"Lucky," the girl said, bitterly.

Harry thought about Justin, and laughed with absolutely no humor. "Not so much."

"I'm Karrin."

"Harry." He sat down. "You want to be a cop?"

"I'm _going_ to be a cop," she corrected him. "What are you going to do?"  
He hadn't thought about it, really. Right now he wasn't even sure he'd make it to seventeen. "I don't know," he said, slowly.

Karrin looked him up and down from where she was still standing. "You should think about it," she said. "It's your future."  
Harry snorted. "Right now I don't even know what's going to happen to me tomorrow. I don't have time to think about the future."

"You don't know?" She stared at him. "What do you mean, you don't know?"  
"My adoptive father just died." The lie burned his tongue; not your father, never your father, and you killed him, Harry. "I'm going to go live with some old uncle of his tomorrow." Another lie. This McCoy person had probably never heard of Justin DuMorne, and he certainly had never heard of Harry Dresden. His only virtue was that he hadn't been at the Council meeting.

Self-righteous, arrogant old farts, looking at him down their noses and telling him that he deserved to die for breaking a law he hadn't even known existed. Unfair, _unfair_, and not right of them to feel smug. How dare they shake their fingers at him, tell him the next time he broke some rule they'd cut his head off? How _dare_ they pat themselves on the back for sparing the poor little orphan boy? He hoped they choked.

Harry was so busy fuming he completely missed the next thing Karrin said. He forgot she existed entirely until he got a vicious poke in the ribs.

After letting out an embarrassingly high-pitched squeak, he glared at her. "What the hell did you do that for?"

"You completely zoned out on me," she retorted. Sometime during his fuming, she'd sat down next to him. "I said I'm sorry about your father."  
"Oh." He tried to think of something to say to that, and failed; decided instead to pretend she was talking about his real father. "Thanks." He looked at her again: tiny, blonde, blue-eyed, she looked like a prime target for a predator. "What are you doing out this late, anyway?"

"I don't want to go home," she said. "Not yet, anyway."

"It's not safe," he said, and hitched a thumb at the cop driving down the street. "That's the only cop I've seen all night."  
Karrin scoffed at him, and waved at the cop. "Hi, Uncle Peter!" she yelled.

The cop pulled over and rolled down his window. "Hi, Karrin," he said. "New friend?"

"Sorta," she said. "Are you coming over for dinner soon?"

"Thursday," the cop said. "See you then, sweetie. I got to get back to my beat."

"See you Thursday!" Karrin waved until he was out of sight, then gave Harry a smug look.

"Fine," he said, and held up his hands in mock-surrender. "I'm sorry for being worried."

"I've also," she said, "been studying aikido for four years. I'm getting my second-dan rank next month. I could take you."

Harry grinned at her, feeling his mood lift a little. "Bet you couldn't."

She stuck out her tongue at him, such a childish gesture from such a mature girl. Harry stared at her for about five seconds before both of them burst into laughter.

"You know something?" he asked, when they both managed to catch their breath. "That's the first time I've laughed since Justin died."

Karrin shook her head. "First time I've laughed since Mom told me I couldn't start rifle training." She scowled again, and drew her knees up to her chest. "I don't know why she won't just let me do what I want to! It's not like I was even asking her to pay for it."

"Maybe she doesn't want her kids shooting at things," Harry said.

"She's letting my brothers go," Karrin said, and sighed. "I don't know. I think it's just because I'm a girl. That's why I'm out here," she added. "I'm trying to handle this whole—thing maturely, and I know if I go in now I'll just scream at her."

"Makes sense," he said, nodding. "Did you think about working on other stuff while you try to persuade her?"

"Like what?" she asked. "I've got aikido to keep me in shape, I've been talking to Uncle Peter about police life, I've done everything I can do. Rifle training was the next step."

He shrugged. "Then wait. There's nothing you can do right now, you just said it. So keep in shape, keep practicing, and wait for the right moment."

_Wait for the right moment._

Oh, God, he'd been so stupid.

"How did you do that?" Karrin asked, oblivious to his sudden epiphany. "How did you just make everything sound okay?"

Harry shook his head, scrambling for words. "I don't know," he said, honestly. "I just figured it out myself. When things aren't going right, all you can do is wait it out, really." He grinned, at her, at the world. "Then, when you get the chance, you _show_ them."

"Oh, I'll show them all right." She smiled back at him. "Will you?"

"Damn straight." He stuck his hand out. "Let's shake on it. I'll show them what's what if you do."  
Karrin gave his hand a firm shake. "I think I can handle Mom now," she said, and got up.

Some ingrained sense of chivalry propelled Harry to his feet; once there, he figured he might as well get going himself. "Good luck." They shook again, and he started to walk away.

"Hey, Harry?" she said, abruptly.

He turned around. "Yeah?"

"If you're ever in town again, look me up." She winked. "I'll show you, too."  
He saluted, then went on his way. He'd show them.

No. _They'd_ show them.


End file.
